Last Thursday, Oct. 11, Washington state became the 20th state to ban the death penalty as a punishment for crimes. In many states, the death penalty is still legal, whether it be through lethal injection, like in Texas, or electrocution, like in Alabama. It is 2018, and people should not be electrocuted to death for crimes they have committed.

While Washington state has made a step in the right direction, only 20 states have banned the death penalty. The concept of the death penalty is rather morbid. A person makes a mistake and commits a crime, whether it be due to a mental illness or how they were raised, and they have no chance for redemption or growth beyond that decision.

That is, of course, not to say that criminals that rape and murder should eventually be allowed to roam freely among those who did not commit crimes. There should still be life-long sentences in prison for those who committed horrific crimes. Prisoners are more than their crime, and they still deserve to live a life and pay penance for it.

The most prevalent argument for the death penalty is that the prison system is already a major cost, and keeping the prisoners alive and healthy is a burden. The idea that the price of keeping someone alive is too much to handle, and therefore, that they should die is so desensitized to the fact that prisoners are, in fact, real people. Many of them have done horrible things, but that does not suddenly make them less human.

Another major concern people have is that if the person committed a murder, they took a life. Their life should be taken as well. In order for a killer to fully repent and feel remorse for what they did, they should be forced to stew in it, think on it and come to terms with what they did. For those who are more vengeful, this concept should provide some peace, knowing that the people who commit the crimes will have to do the time, potentially for the rest of their lives.

Too often do murder convicts, including some that are on death row, actually get proven innocent following trial and are released. In some cases, they are proven innocent post-mortem because they were executed before the technology advanced to where it is now. The safest way to avoid unjustified execution is to not execute people, guilty or otherwise.